Player Features and Ideas Discussion

[Please like or bump this post if you feel it has reasonable merit and at least deserves CCP's consideration.]

CCP has said they are open to ideas from the community about how to potentially remove the attribute system from the game. I know they said it's a surprisingly hard problem; I believe them. I may not have taken all of said problems into consideration, because I might not have identified them.

Apologies if something like this was suggested a few years back. Also, if this is horrible, again, I apologize.

I think I've come up with an approach that at least greatly simplifies the whole attribute system. It doesn't quite remove attributes from the game, but perhaps this system could be a great stride toward that end eventually.

My goals in conceiving such a system were as follows:

- Players with a clear, long-term training goal in mind should be rewarded with a modestly increased rate of advancement
- New players, who need to cover skills in a lot of different areas, should not be heavily penalized for needing to generalize early.
- The system should be much simpler and hopefully elegant in practice than the current system.
- Learning / attribute implants should be removed while resolving all market / financial / value issues.
- Be flexible enough so that those wiser than I can "fill in the blanks" to make the system workable.

On that last point, wherever you see me write 'FITB', that means "using some method or value which I am not the best person to decide."

One final note before going into the system itself. Although this may sound complicated at first, I think it's honestly simple once understood and internalized. Please think about it awhile before dismissing it.

=== Simplifying Attributes - My Proposal ===

== One paragraph summary ==

Skills are now only tied to one attribute, not two. During the progression of one's career, they will typically have a consistent default training rate for all skills. They can select a single "favored" attribute for a finite amount of time by using (newly designed) remaps. Any skill governed / associated with their favored attribute trains 20-33% faster than the default rate. There are no more learning implants, and remaps can be bought / sold on the market. There are 5 types of remaps, each associated with the attribute they allow a character to 'favor'. Remaps now only last a finite amount of time, but the exact length can be improved, at the time of remap, by spending items that can be obtained from the market. New players get to favor more than one attribute for a finite amount of time.

== The Details ==
Remove all secondary attributes for skills. Skills will only be associated with exactly one of the 5 attributes.

OPTIONAL and FITB: Once this is done, there might be an optional opportunity to re-assign some skills to particular attributes. This is a big FITB. It always seemed to me like there are more skills that should be Willpower and Charisma-dominated. Perception and Intelligence seem to dominate a bit too heavily. Maybe I'm wrong.

Next, remove the ability to see a character's numerical attribute values or change them directly. Instead, lock all default training rates to 1,980 SP / hour. FITB: Maybe something besides 1,980?

Next, modify neural remaps so that they simply allow a player, going forward, to pick exactly one of the five attributes to "favor". There should be fives types of remaps (for reasons explained below), each one associated with a specific attribute.
So you'll have a Perception Remap, a Willpower Remap, etc. Obviously, when a remap favors a new attribute, the old attribute is now back to "normal". I.E., only one attribute at a time can be favored.

Any skill associated with the player's favored attribute trains at 2,700 SP per hour. FITB: This "favored" training rate should probably be anywhere between 20% and 33% higher than the default rate.

-- Handling implants

Remove attribute implants from the game, including injected ones, and replace them with a Remap of the same type corresponding to the attribute of the implant. (A Perception implant is replaced by a Perception Remap.)

Additionally, there will be "strength tokens" (a horrible name, please change.) When an implant is removed and replaced, its numerical modifier determines the strength tokens given to the player. A +5 implant yields a much better strength token than a +1.

Next, the effects of remaps are made to be finite. The length of time a remap lasts can be extended by spending strength tokens at the time of remap. So a +1 implant yields a token that increases the duration of a remap just a little bit. A +5 yields a really long-lasting remap.

Change remaps so they are fungible. I.E., they are physical items that can be bought, sold, and traded on the market. Ditto for these strength tokens.

-- Helping new players
Allow new players to favor N attributes, where N is some number between 2 and 5. After some period of time, N is reduced to 1 of their choice. (But this reduction does NOT require a remap. It's just a forced-choose-your-one-favored-attribute event.) After that, the favored attribute is switched via remaps as above.

Questions? Comments? Want to rip this to shreds? Feel free. I'm just trying to help solve a tough problem.

Thanks for providing such thoughtful feedback. To tell you the truth, I like the system right now just the way it is. But that's because I tend to enjoy complex systems over simple ones.

Honestly, and I could be wrong, I was thinking that combining pay-for-remaps with a timer effect could help spur the Eve economy. I think that if you keep the "favored" training rate only modestly higher, you offer benefit without paying for an insane advantage.

But I like all of your points, especially about multiple, optional routes for improving training speed.

...or commonly known as "pay to win", so noeees!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111eleven

While this must be almost painful for newbies we used to train at 1500 and less skillpoints an hour. You can train with 2350 points an hour for the cost of 20m isk and one even remap.

Why should anyone train at higher rates in the beginning?

A rank 1 skill takes a few minutes to train and nobody says you have to have them all at the magic level 5 on day one. There were no remaps when I started, they are a gift for no so new members.

EVE is something you may want to invest a lot of time in, why skip to the end so soon?

100% against buying remaps. The only thing I would like to see done with remaps is where you generate 1 bonus remap every 365 days and retain the cap at having 2. My justification is that no skill plan realistically lasts 365 days on the nose, and much like the old 24 hour jump clone timer, just because it's available every 12 months (or 24 hours), doesn't mean you realistically get to use it every year (Or day).

Past that, if the attributes were to be removed from implants, then anything that adjusts attributes would have to be based off of time since there would be no risk of losing them otherwise when you get podded. With that said, I am fine with implants adjusting attributes.

Now simply removing the secondary attributes from all the skills would simplify the attribute selection greatly, but it would have to be implemented in a way where there is a balance to the skillpoints so that 50% of all the skillpoints in the game are not intelligence. But I don't really care either way if they would simplify this.

Just get rid of attributes, attribute implants, cerebral boosters, remaps, etc. streamline the system. Everyone trains at the same rate, be that rate 2000 sp/hour, 2500 SP/hour, 3000 sp/hour, etc.

Fix the implant market by adding more implant sets that benefit ships in space. Players in who want the advantage in combat can risk the implants. If necessary to avoid power creep, make some appropriate "adjustments" across the board to make implant sets or hardwirings more desirable.

Attributes in a tight connection with remaps. Having skills tied up with attributes need to think of how to balance skill ranking system right after you've remove the attributes and remap system as well cause you shouldn't bother with that connection anymore.

So now it would be stright forward -> skill rank*learning speed rate (sp/hr).

Maybe attributes could affect the skills you have instead of the SPs you get.

Dust SP are not account wide, they are tied to the character that has passive training active.
And also the Dust system allows blatant training into the current FOTM, and is based around grinding SP in game, which EVE is very specifically not about.

However yes we could just delete attributes and implement a steady training rate, and let the implant market sort itself out. CCP have said they are holding off because of the implant market and mission runners, but I'm happy for them to just delete attribute implants, refund appropriately when they are in peoples possession and just let the market sort itself out afterwards.